head to head · open source
Ladybird vs badssl.com
Ladybird has 66,240 GitHub stars, 3,162 forks, 535 open issues and last shipped yesterday. badssl.com has 3,047 stars, 204 forks, 210 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Ladybird leads on adoption by 2,074% (66,240 vs 3,047 stars). Ladybird is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause; badssl.com is written in HTML under Apache-2.0. Ladybird has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, badssl.com 7%. Ladybird was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (browser), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Ladybird | badssl.com | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 3.0K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-06-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 204 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Ladybird if
- You weight community size — 66K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick badssl.com if
- You want the badssl.com feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and badssl.com fits your workflow better
About Ladybird
Ladybird is a truly independent web browser and browser engine, written from scratch in C++ rather than as a fork of any existing engine, and it is built for developers who want to work on a browser engine based on web standards while it remains in a pre alpha state.
read the full Ladybird overview →
About badssl.com
badssl.com is an openly licensed, community maintained collection of deliberately misconfigured TLS endpoints — served at https://badssl.com and developed in the chromium/badssl.com repository — for developers, security engineers, and browser or HTTP client authors who need to verify how their software reacts to expired, self signed, mixed content, and otherwise invalid certificates.
read the full badssl.com overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ladybird or badssl.com more popular?
Ladybird has 66,240 GitHub stars and badssl.com has 3,047. Ladybird has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ladybird and badssl.com free?
Both are open source. Ladybird is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and badssl.com under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ladybird and badssl.com?
Ladybird is written in C++ and badssl.com in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Ladybird or badssl.com?
Choose Ladybird if you want the larger community (66,240 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose badssl.com if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.